“This is such a beautiful beach. It is a real shame it is so dirty!”

(A quote from a young foreign tourist who was dismayed by the volume of litter on Ipanema beach).

Saturday 11th of January 2020 was another beach day in Rio de Janeiro and another challenge for the municipal garbage collectors as they try to collect and dispose of the hundreds of kilos of plastic trash and garbage left by beach-goers on the sands and by the waterline in Ipanema.

Saturday and Sunday are the worst days on Ipanema beach in terms of trash and garbage. Although the democratistion of suburban public access to Rio de Janeiro’s south zone beaches via BRT lines and metro may be laudable, it comes at a cost to the environment. The greater number of people flooding onto the beaches inevitably means a greater volume of litter. The endemic culture of carelessly littering the environment heedless of the damage caused means that many beachgoers turn the beach into a seaside rubbish dump or tip.

The litter also builds up in the surrounding streets as beachgoers discard their trash on their way to and from the beach. The careless public have adopted the street plant and tree beds as trash cans, as can be seen in the following photos in Rua Teixeira de Melo, one of the streets leading from the metro to Ipanema beach. 

(Trash in tree bed in front of Super Prix Supermarket)

Somebody has actually broken off the trunk of this tree. 

The situation is made worse by the fact that the small municipal litter bins fixed to lampposts are too small to handle the volume of trash. Moreover, the municipality has removed the large wheelie bins from the promenades, streets and sands.

I asked a local municipal garbage collector if the local council would bring back the wheelie bins. He said they had been removed because people either steal or break the wheelie bins. 

Even when there were wheelie bins, people would still throw their trash on the ground and so I believe it is a question of environmental consciousness and attitude not just the lack of litter bins. 

The most serious consequence of litter in the gutter of the streets is that it clogs up the rainwater drains, resulting in flooding in periods of torrential rain. Global warming means that such torrential rainfall is becoming more and more frequent. Recently, a number of major Brazilian cities have suffered torrential rainfall causing disastrous floods with consequent destruction of property and loss of life. 

The following two photos are of trash and garbage in the gutter, clogging the rainwater drains in Rua  Barão da Torre in Ipanema, next to Super Prix Supermarket. 

The next photo is of  a pile of trash and garbage thrown into the gutter under a truck in Rua Teixeira de Melo near the Zona Sul Supermarket, in Ipanema.

The unsightly piles of litter in the streets and on the beach are not only bad for the environment but also give a very negative impression to tourists.

See this photo of a small litter bin on the corner of Rua Teixeira de Melo with the Avenida Vieira Souto beach road in Ipanema, overflowing with trash and garbage.

In the late afternoon of 11^th January 2020, I jogged up the beach and collected piles of trash and garbage just along the shoreline and in the tidal zone of Arpoador beach in Ipanema. The trash included the ubiquitous plastic beverage containers, plastic straws, biscuit wrappers, mineral water bottles, plastic bags, beer cans, beer bottles and food remains. The following photo is of the shoreline trash collected at Arpoador.

Raucous music in poor taste assaults the ears at Arpoador. The soothing music of the lapping waves is drowned out. It seems noise pursues us wherever we go: from Brazil to Bali, from Ipanema to Ibiza. The norm these days for many beachgoers is noisy music of dubious taste, a lot of alcohol and a complete disregard for the natural environment.

Some beachgoers go to the beach equipped with sound systems with which they belt out rap music. Competing sound systems, often separated by a mere 20 paces, create a cacophony and resulting bedlam for other beachgoers. 

Jogging back from Arpoador, down to the area near Rua Teixeira de Melo, I collected further trash.  The second collection included two bags containing a lot of empty beer bottles. Those were very heavy. Many young beachgoers buy 10-kilo bags of ice and a lot of beer bottles and get well oiled on the beach. They usually just leave the bottles and ice bags near the shoreline. 

The result of the two collections along the shoreline probably came to about 40 kilos of trash and garbage. It was too hot and I was too tired to do any more. It is back-breaking work and I sympathise with the local garbage collectors. 

As I was finishing, a pretty young blonde tourist came up and helped me by collecting some trash. Dismayed by the amount of trash people leave on the beach, she said, “This is such a beautiful beach. It is a real shame it is so dirty!”

I thanked her and told her that unfortunately many people did not seem to care about the damage to the environment caused by plastic in the oceans. The waves sweep the trash in the tidal zone into the sea with disastrous consequences for marine life and human beings.

As I was leaving, I met two very pleasant lady municipal garbage collectors who said they had observed me picking up the garbage and wondered why a foreigner bothered to do this when many Brazilian beachgoers could not be bothered to do the same. I replied that I was only doing my part in helping to lessen the amount of trash and said, “Thank God you exist because without the municipal garbage collectors, we would all disappear under a mountain of trash!”

Ipanema beach is beautiful and deserves better treatment from the people who enjoy it. It is a tradition at Arpoador that beachgoers clap in applause as the sun sets over the sea to the west. I wonder whether they will clap as the sun sets on human life on this planet if our environmental stupidity takes us beyond the brink of extinction.